The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and army carried out a joint aerial military drill in the Gulf on Friday in what official media said indicated the “pounding reply” that awaited the country’s enemies. Tehran has suggested in recent weeks that it could take military action in the Gulf to block other countries’ oil exports in retaliation for U.S. sanctions intended to halt its sales of crude. Washington maintains a fleet in the Gulf that protects oil shipping routes. “In addition to a show of strength, this ceremony is a message of peace and friendship for friendly and neighboring countries,” Colonel Yousef Safipour, the deputy commander of the army for public relations said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “And if the enemies and arrogant powers have an eye on the borders and land of Islamic Iran they will receive a pounding reply in the fraction of a second.” Mullahs are spreading their panic..

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Mig 29s, F-16/F-18-esq maneuverability and power. The issue with the Iranian fighters is training, and supply of the right gear. A F-14, with a maintained Phoenix system, would still be a serious interceptor. But it's just a fuel guzzling airframe in it's current state. They couldn't beat Saddam in the 80s when the F-14s were relatively new.

But Iran is pretty good at assaymentric war. And to paraphrase Uncle Remus, the US seeks out the tar baby.

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For those of you who think Iran can be defeated by US super-carriers, think again. Iran has the ability to sink US carriers. Here's how:

Iran has taken old Russian technology, developed about 1962, known technically as "wing-in-ground-effect," or WIG technology. The WIG was developed into a weapons platform known as the "Ekranoplan", a marvelous machine originally intended to allow entire brigades of Russian troops to skirt underneath Western radar and land an invasion army wherever it wanted. The Ekranoplan is a truncated wing that allows the "ship," built as an aircraft but not capable of actual sustained flight, to sail along about 15 or 30 feet over the ocean surface. Working models were built that operated at speeds of 323 mph while loaded with heavy tanks. The lift capability of an Ekranoplan was as high as 1,200,000 lbs.

The Iranians have taken this concept and turned it into a two-man machine, with small cross-section, that can provide a swarm of vessels at varying speeds and heights in a mass swarm attack on a carrier. With a thousand of these mini-attackers coming at once, the carrier defenses (designed for much larger targets) are overwhelmed, and a certain number get through the defenses to clobber the carrier with short-range explosive missiles. That would sink the carrier. These machines are giving the US Nave the heebie-jeevies, and the current US plan is to pull its carrier task forces completely out of the Persian Gulf, in effect vacating the opportunity for the Revolutionary Guards and their attack machines to hit the ships.

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For those of you who think Iran can be defeated by US super-carriers, think again. Iran has the ability to sink US carriers. Here's how:

Iran has taken old Russian technology, developed about 1962, known technically as "wing-in-ground-effect," or WIG technology. The WIG was developed into a weapons platform known as the "Ekranoplan", a marvelous machine originally intended to allow entire brigades of Russian troops to skirt underneath Western radar and land an invasion army wherever it wanted. The Ekranoplan is a truncated wing that allows the "ship," built as an aircraft but not capable of actual sustained flight, to sail along about 15 or 30 feet over the ocean surface. Working models were built that operated at speeds of 323 mph while loaded with heavy tanks. The lift capability of an Ekranoplan was as high as 1,200,000 lbs.

The Iranians have taken this concept and turned it into a two-man machine, with small cross-section, that can provide a swarm of vessels at varying speeds and heights in a mass swarm attack on a carrier. With a thousand of these mini-attackers coming at once, the carrier defenses (designed for much larger targets) are overwhelmed, and a certain number get through the defenses to clobber the carrier with short-range explosive missiles. That would sink the carrier. These machines are giving the US Nave the heebie-jeevies, and the current US plan is to pull its carrier task forces completely out of the Persian Gulf, in effect vacating the opportunity for the Revolutionary Guards and their attack machines to hit the ships.

Here is what the Iranian machines look like:

some times low tech is better then high tech

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If you can picture this, the carrier defenders are confronted with this massive swarm of these little flying boats, all coming in at different altitudes, and with different angles of attack. A thousand of them. Now, how do you pick them off? You can shoot down some, of course, and those guys die. But some get through, and you don't even have to have a complicated missile, all you need is to strap on a big bomb with a contact detonator, the boat hits the side of the carrier and Boom! You end up with the same as the USS Stark.

There are two types of WIG machines, the Type A and the Type B, the difference being the height they can achieve. The Iranians only use Type B. Although they cannot fly, they have the ability to "jump," by trading airspeed for climb and elevation, then can swoop down from a height. If you can get enough speed up, you can climb a machine up to 1,000 ft. It won't stay there, but then you can come swooping in like a Stuka. Meanwhile other guys are charging in at low level, and others in between, and of course they are constantly climbing and descending and moving around, so it is all in three dimensions.,

The key to this type of attack pattern is that the pilots have to be willing to die. It is a bit like the Japanese at the end of WWII with their Kamikaze guys. And if there is a missile instead of a contact bomb, then your pilot death is not a certainty, you might be able to launch that missile and still get away. Meanwhile, the giant carrier is a juicy target. Hard to miss it when you get up close and personal.

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This is a joke, right? They'd be spotted the second they left port. Carriers have Phalanx weapon systems that fire 3000 - 4500 rounds of AP per second. Plus the carriers are surrounded by frigates and cruisers with the same guns and missiles. The only question is if you can reload the ammo drums fast enough. I don't doubt that Iran could easily find a thousand "volunteers" for a suicide mission. But this type of attack has already been planned for and it would take many hits to do any significant damage. They certainly won't sink a carrier this way. Iran would have better luck with a barrage of cruise missiles or maybe park one of their subs on the sea floor and hope to avoid detection.

So they attack and do same damage. Do think the US will back off? Nope, they will blast Iran back to the stone age and no one will step in to defend Iran. Not even the Soviets.

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correction: 3000 - 4500 rounds per minute per gun. The 5th fleet has two carriers plus 18 to 20 support vessels. Each carrier has 3 or 4 Phalanx systems and 3 or 4 Sea Sparrow missile launchers. So maybe 40 Phalanx systems between all of them. That means 2000 to 3000 rounds per second going out plus the missiles and F-18's for air cover. I think our odds are pretty good.

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For those of you who think Iran can be defeated by US super-carriers, think again. Iran has the ability to sink US carriers. Here's how:

Iran has taken old Russian technology, developed about 1962, known technically as "wing-in-ground-effect," or WIG technology. The WIG was developed into a weapons platform known as the "Ekranoplan", a ﻿marvelous machine originally intended to allow entire brigades of Russian troops to ﻿skirt undernea﻿th Western radar and land an invasion army wherever it wanted. The Ekranoplan is a truncated wing that allows the "ship," built as an aircraft but not capable of actual sustained flight, ﻿to sail along about 15 or 30 feet over the ocean surface. Working models were built that operate﻿d at speeds of 323 mph while loaded﻿ with ﻿heavy tan﻿ks. The lift ﻿cap﻿abili﻿t﻿y of an Ekranoplan ﻿was﻿ as high as 1,200,000 lbs. ﻿

The Iranians have taken this concept and turned it into a two-man machine, with small cross-sect﻿ion, that can provide a swarm of vessels at varying speeds and heights in a mass ﻿sw﻿arm attack on a carrier. With a thousand of these mini-attackers coming at once, the carrier defenses (designed for much larger targets) are overwhelmed, and a certain number get through the defenses to clobber the carrier with short-range explosive missiles. That would sink the carrier. These machines are giving the US Nave the heebie-jeevies, and the current US plan is to pull its carrier task forces ﻿completely out of﻿ t﻿he Pers﻿i﻿a﻿﻿n Gulf, in ef﻿fect vacating the ﻿o﻿pportun﻿﻿ity fo﻿﻿r the Revolutio﻿nary ﻿﻿Guards ﻿a﻿nd their attac﻿k machines t﻿o hit th﻿e sh﻿ips.

Here is wh﻿at th﻿e Iran﻿ian machines loo﻿k﻿ like:

I seriously doubt these Irarian/Russian Ekranoplans are any kind of real threat to the US military. All it would take is one drone swarm bomb from a single US fighter and their entire fleet of these plane/boats would be sinking to the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz.

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I seriously doubt these Irarian/Russian Ekranoplans are any kind of real threat to the US military. All it would take is one drone swarm bomb from a single US fighter and their entire fleet of these plane/boats would be sinking to the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz.

I would not be so sanguine about US military prowess with those drones. Keep in mind that the Iranians anticipate all that, and their little boats have two men: one to fly it, and the second is sitting there with a heavy machine gun, specifically to throw serious rounds at drones, aircraft, ships, whatever is coming along to knock them out. My bets are on the machine gun.

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Obviously, there is a good chance that ships can be hit and sunk, or at least disabled, using swarming methods of many different types of craft at once with meatheads ready to give their lives to meet the virgins. The better idea is to park the carrier group out in the Arabian Sea and conduct ops from there. The only reasons to park the group in the Gulf are presence and supply logistics. It would seem to me that a carrier that is close to its enemy is more of a liability than an asset, meaning you would spend an inordinate amount of time and effort defending the carrier, and not enough time attacking the enemy. Move it far enough away that defense is secondary, and then scramble the jets, which are the true forward force. Yes, it is obvious the U.S. and Gulf Ally forces would win out, but there would be damages to deal with. That is, unfortunately part of the cost of defense.

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I seriously doubt these Irarian/Russian Ekranoplans are any kind of real threat to the US military. All it would take is one drone swarm bomb from a single US fighter and their entire fleet of these plane/boats would be sinking to the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz.

Let's put this into a different perspective, Epic: If those contraptions, plus a couple of thousand ski boats, plus a few family sized submarines and all the machine guns, rocket launchers, bombs, land based rockets/missiles/guns (think all you can eat buffet of weapons) were available to you, me and all of our friends out on Lake Michigan, I'd give us pretty good odds of sinking one carrier.

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This is a joke, right? They'd be spotted the second they left port. Carriers have Phalanx weapon systems that fire 3000 - 4500 rounds of AP per second. Plus the carriers are surrounded by frigates and cruisers with the same guns and missiles. The only question is if you can reload the ammo drums fast enough. I don't doubt that Iran could easily find a thousand "volunteers" for a suicide mission. But this type of attack has already been planned for and it would take many hits to do any significant damage. They certainly won't sink a carrier this way. Iran would have better luck with a barrage of cruise missiles or maybe park one of their subs on the sea floor and hope to avoid detection.

So they attack and do same damage. Do think the US will back off? Nope, they will blast Iran back to the stone age and no one will step in to defend Iran. Not even the Soviets.

No joke, Robert. This is what is known in military-speak as "asymmetrical warfare." You have this enormously expensive target, costing roughly $13.5 billion, with five thousand men on board, and over a thousand feet long, sitting out there right off your shore and then there are lets say a thousand of these swarm boats coming at it. Your vaunted Phalanx machine spitting out the bullets is radar-guided, and cannot swing fast enough between targets, which it has to acquire, lock onto, fire at, knock down (or apart), then swivel to scan and acquire the next target. Time works against you. Let's say you can knock down ten targets a minute, one every 6 seconds. Remember, the radar has to determine that the target is acquired and knocked down before it moves to the next. Meanwhile assume those incoming machines are travelling at a mild 120 mph, or 2 miles a minute. Your carrier is sitting ten miles offshore, in a 20-mile-wide Gulf. Let's say the bugs are using some form of launch missile and can launch from 8 miles away. The bugs only need to travel 12 miles, and your gun has an effective range of - what? - one mile? Five miles? these guys can swarm and launch and never even get into range of your mini-gun machine. Now what?

You are left with having to use the gun to knock down a thousand incoming missiles. They are travelling at say 420 mph. You have a time window of 90 seconds to knock down 1,000 missiles.

And you have not even hit one WIG machine. In a few minutes, they are swarming back with a re-load. More missiles.

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The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and army carried out a joint aerial military drill in the Gulf on Friday in what official media said indicated the “pounding reply” that awaited the country’s enemies. Tehran has suggested in recent weeks that it could take military action in the Gulf to block other countries’ oil exports in retaliation for U.S. sanctions intended to halt its sales of crude. Washington maintains a fleet in the Gulf that protects oil shipping routes. “In addition to a show of strength, this ceremony is a message of peace and friendship for friendly and neighboring countries,” Colonel Yousef Safipour, the deputy commander of the army for public relations said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “And if the enemies and arrogant powers have an eye on the borders and land of Islamic Iran they will receive a pounding reply in the fraction of a second.” Mullahs are spreading their panic..

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Honestly, though, I'd say the Iranians would crash most of them and blow up most of the rest leaving base. But in any case, move the carrier out into the sea and don't test the odds.

Don't underestimate Iranians. They are a smart society, with lots of very smart people. I would hazard a guess that Iranians are the smartest people in the Middle East. How they got to the point of being terrorized by Ayatollahs and assorted crazies is beyond me. That said, I don't think they wold lose even one WIG machine leaving base. These guys in the Iranian Navy are totally professional soldiers/sailors, you underestimate them at your great risk. The US Navy brass does not, and that is why they will indeed not "test the odds." Those carriers will stay well out to sea, where they have maneuvering room.

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If those contraptions, plus a couple of thousand ski boats, plus a few family sized submarines and all the machine guns, rocket launchers, bombs, land based rockets/missiles/guns (think all you can eat buffet of weapons) were available to you, me and all o﻿f our friends out on Lake Michigan, I'd give us pretty good odds of sinking one carrier.

I agree we would have a pretty good chance...as long as they don't have drone swarm bombs. If they did, we would all be dead before any of us can shoot. Let's use Jan's numbers:

23 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

those incoming machines are travelling at a mild 120 mph, or 2 miles a minute﻿. Y﻿our carrie﻿r is sitting ten miles offshore, in a 20-mile-wide Gulf.

That gives the carrier, what, about 5 minutes to react. The carrier has 4 launchers, and each one can launch about 1 plane per minute, so you can have about 20 fighters in the air to engage the 1,000 approaching ships. Assuming each fighter only has one drone bomb, that would be 2,000 flying homing bombs that are the size of a bird but with x10 the maneuverability and can't miss. The Iranian pilots would not even see them coming. They wouldn't even think of shooting at the drones since they can't see them; plus, the Iranians would be too focused on the fighters, which they can see, and who are also shooting at them. Jan's calculation suggested that conventional arms could shoot down 1 Iranian plane per 6 seconds. I think it is much more likely the drone swarm could shoot down 100 planes per second. Against the swarm, the Iranians do not have a chance. 0%. Of course, that is assuming 1 swarm per US fighter. Now, lets say each fighter has 10 of these drone swarms; now the Iranians are dealing with 20,000 flying bombs that can't miss and can't be shot down. Game over for the Iranians before they can even fire a missile, and not a single ship would make it back to reload. Immediately after this very brief "fight" (slaughter is a better word), the Iranian bases that launched those ships would be destroyed within minutes.

Of course, this is assuming that the navy uses these drone swarms, and it is also assuming that they are as effective in combat as the videos suggest. If they don't or if they aren't, then the navy will sure have one hell of a good fight on their hands. In this second case, I'd bet that a great many missiles would get through, hundreds even, but I am not sure if even that would be enough to sink the carrier. The USS Forrestal was "hit" by plenty of munitions and it didn't sink. However, assuming the Iranians did manage to sink the carrier with the first salvo of missiles (which could be possible given the short range and the large number of ships), Jan is still wrong about those ships reloading those missiles and returning with a second salvo. By the time they returned to base to reload, those bases would be destroyed.

Maybe I'm wrong, but one thing is sure: I am now really looking forward to the fight.

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Jan is still wrong about those ships reloading those missiles and returning with a second salvo. By the time they returned to base to reload, those bases would be destroyed.

I think you are overlooking the unique design aspects of a WIG. Those machines can float over land same as an auto, and thus have the ability of floating into the city and into some residential neighborhood and into a garage, there to be re-armed. What is the USA going to do: have their ground-attack jets go bomb civilian neighborhoods? You know the US cannot do that. SO the dispersal of those WIG machines throughout the civilian population makes them blind to the US Navy.

"Maybe I'm wrong, but one thing is sure: I am now really looking forward to the fight."

I wouldn't. "Fights" involve American lives, and inevitably such close-in combat will end up with plenty of dead Americans also. Not so pleasant for their families. Keep in mind that, today, lots of servicemen and women are married with children. The spouses and the children also take it on the chin.

Fights have this tendency to not go quite the way originally anticipated, and get to higher losses. There were 55,000 dead Americans in Vietnam. That also means that there are 55,000 American women who can find no husband.

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In 2002 the US armed forces conducted a major naval war game exercise called "Millenium Challenge 2002" involving live exercises and computer simulations. It was a simulation of a US-Iranian naval battle. Paul Van Riper, a smart US general playing the Iranian side, used asymetric tactics and launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the US forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. including one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of the US fleet was "sunk" by an armada of small Iranian boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on US inability to detect them as well as expected.

At this point, the exercise was suspended, and the rules of engagement were changed in order to end with the expected overwhelming US victory. Van Riper was extremely critical of the scripted nature of the new exercise and resigned from the exercise in the middle of the war game.